A 40-year-old man arrested on Sunday for starting two fires in the forest of Anglet on the Basque coast was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward on Monday evening, Tuesday August 16, the Bayonne prosecutor’s office said.
“The investigation into his hospitalization is on hold, we cannot hear at this stageBayonne deputy prosecutor Mark Bride explained.
Awaiting in court
Police were alerted by passers-by who saw the man behaving suspiciously on the edge of Chiberta Forest in Anglet early Sunday afternoon. The man was already known to the police a few days earlier for attacking a bus driver in Biarritz on the night of August 7-8, according to the prosecutor’s office. “He was interned before being released on Friday because his condition was not considered serious by doctorsAnglet Mayor Claude Olive said this Tuesday.
A man with a clean criminal record is being summoned to a Bayonne court before the end of the year to answer for this attack, according to the Bayonne prosecutor’s office. He spent two days in police custody before being transferred to Pellegrini Hospital in Bordeaux on Monday evening. On Sunday, the mayor of Anglet issued an order to automatically commit the arsonist, but due to lack of space in the Bayonne hospital, the man was kept in a cell.though his condition was altogether incongruous“, says the mayor.
On July 30, 2020, a fire of criminal origin, for which the teenager is accused, burned 167 hectares of the same forest in Anglet. As a result of the fire, 5 houses were destroyed, there were no casualties or injuries. In the context of the current drought, Anglet’s mayor issued a curfew on Aug. 8, which was lifted on the Sunday morning of the event.
Source: Le Figaro
